INTERNATIONAL BRIEFS;Two Italian Grocers Agree to Merge

Vege Italia and A & O S.p.A., two Italian grocery retailers, said yesterday that they were pooling their supermarkets to create Italy's second-largest chain, with annual sales exceeding 11 trillion lire, or $7.3 billion. Details of the transaction will be released on Tuesday. The companies said the result would be a 2,687-store network stretching from the Swiss border to Sicily. A & O and Vege said the combined entity would be second only to Coop, which has 13.2 percent of the grocery market.

Executives of the two companies, which are both associations of private store owners, said the move would let them cut costs by combining operations like distribution and marketing and increasing their influence with suppliers. (Bloomberg Business News)